The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (59 page)

His icy blue eyes burned with cold. “I saved his life. And he’s not that stupid.”

“All right.”

Milton clenched and unclenched his fists. “When I got back to the hotel, the girl was gone. It didn’t happen there. No sign of a struggle. Nothing disturbed. I looked through her stuff. She’d written this down.”

Milton handed him a piece of paper. Plato recognised the address. The note said that she had gone to investigate a murder.

“There was a body found here earlier,” Milton said. “Another of the dead girls.”

“That’s right. It was on the radio. She must have gone to cover it.”

“I’ll ask around. Maybe whoever was there might’ve seen her.”

“Thank you.”

“This phone call you had with Felipe—what did he say?”

“He knows we’ve got his son. He wants to exchange. Her for him.”

“You do know you can’t trust anything he says?”

“Of course. I’ve dealt with men like him before, Plato.”

“I doubt it,” he said, shaking his head. “Not like him. Where does he want to meet?”

“A village south of Juárez. Samalayuca.”

“I know it. It’s off the 45. Not a good place for you.”

“Why?”

“Open ground. No one else around for miles. And he’ll know it well. I’ve been out there more than a few times over the years. One of their favourite places for dumping bodies.”

“That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I’m going to need some help.”

Plato shook his head.

“There’s me and Baxter, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I need someone who’s good with a rifle.”

“No, Smith, I’m sorry—I just can’t.”

“Don’t think about me, Lieutenant. Don’t think about Baxter. It’s the girl. You know if we don’t do something they’ll kill her.”

“I know that, and it’s awful, but she knew the risks, and it doesn’t make any difference. I still can’t. Look—let me tell you a story. I’ve been dealing with the cartel about as long as they’ve been around, least in the form they’re in at the moment. Before El Patrón, there was another boss. They called him
El Señor de Los Cielos
. Lord of the Skies, on account of the jumbo jets they said he had, packed full of cocaine up from Colombia. He was Mr. Juárez for years. And then La Frontera came over from Sinaloa, trying to muscle in on his turf. There was a war, a proper one, a shooting war.”

He took another long pull on his beer.

“Bad things happened. Over the years, I got to see some pretty awful shit. The line of work I think you’re in, I’m guessing you’ve seen those things, too. And I’ve met bad men. But recently, things have gotten worse. The men have gotten worse—younger—and the old rules don’t apply. The one I remember more than all the others, he was just a kid. Fourteen years old from out of the
barrio
. This kid had been given a gun and told to shoot two dealers for the Juárez cartel. They were trying to sell on a corner that La Frontera was claiming for itself. And he did it. Point blank, one shot each in the back of the head and then another while they were on the ground. We picked him up. He didn’t try to run. I interviewed him. Looked like he wanted to talk about it. Like he was proud. He told me that he’d been wanting to kill someone since he was a little boy. Said that if he got out, he’d do it again, and I believed him. There are others like him. Dozens of them. What does that say for the future, John? What chance have we got?”

Milton looked at him. Had his face softened a little?

“Look around, man—I’ve got a family. Wife and kids. And look at me. I’m fifty-five years old. I retire on Friday. I’m going to fix up this boat, drink beer, and go fishing. There’s no place for a man like me in a world like that. You always had to go to work knowing that there’s a good chance you might get shot today. I could live with that. But now it’s worse—now, they’ll go after your family, too, and I won’t do that. I’ve done my time. I’m out. You understand?”

Milton did not answer.

There was no disapproval, just a quick recalibration of circumstances.

“I understand. This place—Samalayuca. Can you give me directions?”

BEAU BAXTER had his face in the dust. The toes of his boots were against the gravel of the ridge, his pelvis pressed tight against it, his elbows prised up against rough stones. His Jeep was back up the ridge; his jacket was hanging from a Joshua tree. He pushed his Stetson back a little, loosening the hand-braided horsehair stampede string that was tight up against his neck. The rifle on the ground next to him was a Weatherby Mark V Deluxe with the claro walnut stock and highly polished blued barrelled action, chambered for the .257 Wetherby Magnum cartridge. He had been here since dawn, and it had been so quiet, he thought, that you could damn near hear your own hair grow. He had a pair of twenty-power Japanese binoculars he had bought in Tijuana. He swept the scrubland below with them. The valley floor was made up of a reddish-brown lava rock that, depending on the angle of the sun, could turn a blackish lavender. There were tracks of wiry javelina pigs and mule deer but nothing human. Beau stuffed his mouth with chewing tobacco and waited like a grizzled old buzzard guarding his roadkill.

He saw the dust cloud. It blurred in the shimmer and drifted north, the faint desert breeze catching it and pushing it back towards the city. It grew into a long yellow slash of dust, gradually rising, eventually growing to a mile long before he could make out the hire car Smith was driving at its head. It bumped off the asphalt and onto the rough track, greasewood bushes and pear cactus on either side, slowing to negotiate the deeper potholes. He put the glasses to his eyes and focussed. Eventually it was close enough for Beau to see Smith at the wheel and, in the back, Adolfo González. The cloud of dust kept drifting north.

Beau still wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing. He had Adolfo. All he had to do was cuff him, wrists and ankles, put him in the back of the Jeep, cross the border, pick up his money. Smith would have let him do it, too, if it hadn’t been for the girl. Beau had watched as Smith spoke to El Patrón, and although he had kept his voice calm, he had seen the flashes of anger in his eyes. He would never agree to let him have Adolfo now, not until they had gotten Caterina back again. Beau wondered for a moment about drawing down on him, just taking the greaser and bugging out for the border, but there was something about the Englishman that told him that that would be a very bad idea. He didn’t want a mean dude like that on his tail. That, and the fact that he had just saved his life.

They had agreed to meet El Patrón out here in the desert and get the girl but try and get away with Adolfo, too. Beau was taking the risk with the bounty, so Smith had agreed that he should be the one with the rifle. Much less dangerous away from the action. Smith would make the exchange, and Beau would provide cover, should Smith need it.

Beau knew that he would.

As a kid in the woods of southeast Texas, Beau had never really been good at much in particular with the exception of hunting. This talent was honed in Vietnam, where he was trained as a sniper by the 101
^st
Airborne in Phu Bai. He did his stint on a hunt-and-kill team with the Fifth Infantry Division out of Quang Tri Province. The team included rangers, recondos, jungle experts, snipers, Special Forces, and even a mercenary who was trying to regain his US citizenship after previously hiring out to foreign governments. Beau reckoned that the reaper teams were the most deadly assembled group of specialists in all of ’Nam.

He learned plenty, like how to shoot.

The sun behind him was a good thing: there would be no reflection off his glasses or the scope. It was climbing into a perfect blue sky, already blazing hot. There was no wind. No cloud cover. No shelter. The air shimmered in the heat. The deep shadow of the ridge and the Joshua tree were cast out across the floodplain below him. A little vegetation: candelilla and catclaw and mesquite thickets. He put the binoculars down and mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. He gazed out over the land. To the west and east were the mountains. To the south, the arid scrub of the
barrial
that ran out into the deeper desert. He saw another cloud of dust on the 45. He picked up the glasses again and found the road. It was another car, an SUV, with tinted windows. A narco car. It turned off the road and followed Smith down the same long track. He replaced the glasses, took a slug of water from the canteen shaded by his hat, and picked up the rifle. His vantage point was nicely elevated, not too much, well within the range of the Weatherby. He nudged the forestock around until he had the car in his sights. He slipped his finger through the trigger guard.

The narco who had climbed the mesa behind him had followed him all the way from Juárez. The man was a tracker, a coyote with experience of smuggling people over the border. He knew how to move quietly, how to avoid detection.

Beau never even saw him.

The first thing he knew about it was the click as the man cocked his revolver.

MILTON GOT out of the hire car. The air was arid and clear all the way to both horizons, where it broke up into morning haze. The heat was already unbelievable. The sun was ferocious. He could feel the skin on his face beginning to burn. It seemed to coat him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and he broke out into a sweat almost immediately. He felt the moisture seeping into his shirt, sticking the fabric against his stomach.

The Mercedes Viano rumbled down the bare track towards him, a cone of dust pluming in its wake. The sun reflected off the windscreen with a dazzling glare. Milton took off his jacket, folding it neatly and laying it on the driver’s seat. He opened the rear door, took Adolfo by the crook of the elbow, and dragged him out of the car. He shoved him forwards so that he fell forwards onto his knees, took the Springfield, and aimed at his back.

“Nice and easy,” he said.

The Viano slowed and swung around, coming to rest opposite the hire car. Milton leant against the bonnet. The metal was already searing hot.

The passenger-side door of the SUV slid open. Milton looked inside. Too dark to make much out.

“Where’s the girl?” he called.

Two men stepped down. One had a short-barrelled H&K machine pistol with a black leather shoulder strap. The other had a twelve-gauge Remington automatic shotgun with a walnut stock and a twenty-round drum magazine.

“She ain’t here,
ese
.”

Milton racked the slide of the Springfield. “Where is she?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll see her.”

He took a step forward and jabbed the muzzle into the nape of Adolfo’s neck.

“Are you calling my bluff?”

Milton tightened his grip on the pistol.

“Shoot him!” Adolfo screamed at the men.

Milton glanced around. The sun dazzled him. What was Beau waiting for?

A plume of dust kicked up a foot to his left; the cracking report of the rifle echoed across the desert.

“Your friend can’t help you. Drop the gun.”

A second shot rang out, this one a foot to his right. The bullet caromed off the rocks and ricocheted away into the scrub.

Milton tightened his grip and half-squeezed the trigger. Another ounce or two of pressure and González’s brains would be splashed across the sand. But what then? The two
sicarios
looked like they knew how to use their weapons, and the man with Beau’s Weatherby was a decent shot, too. He could shoot González, but then Caterina would be killed. He didn’t know what the right play was, apart from the certainty that it wasn’t shooting the man. Not yet.

He stepped back, released his grip, and let the pistol drop to the scrub.

Adolfo’s cuffs were unlocked. He sneered at Milton. He took the shotgun and flipped it around. “Fuck you, English,” he said. He swung the shotgun. The stock caught him on the chin and staggered him. The blazing bright day dimmed, just for a moment, but he did not go down. Adolfo flexed his shoulders, as if he was straightening out a kink, then swung again.

This time, the light dimmed for longer, and he went down. He dropped to the hard-packed dirt and sat there, the taste of his blood like copper pennies in his mouth. His instinct was to get up, so he did. He rose and stood, swaying. A wave of blackness came over him. He took an uncertain step forwards. Blood ran out of his mouth freely now. Adolfo stepped back for extra space and jabbed the stock into his unguarded chin as hard as he could. The black curtain fell and did not rise again. Milton fell face first into the dust.

PLATO LEFT his cruiser at home and took the Accord. He was dressed in jeans and a white shirt and a trucker’s cap. He had his shotgun in the footwell next to him, and there was a box of shells on the seat. He reversed out of his driveway and set off to the south. He didn’t look back; he didn’t want to see Emelia’s face in the window. He wondered sometimes that the woman was practically psychic. She always knew when he had something on his mind. He had managed to avoid her this morning, creeping out of bed and leaving the house as quietly as he could. Even then, he had heard the floorboard in the bedroom creaking as she got out of bed. He’d nearly stayed, then, the reality of just how stupid this was slapping him right in the face. But then he thought of his old man, and his badge, and what that all meant, and he opened the door and set off.

The lights out of the city were all on green for him. One after the next, the whole sequence, all of them green. He wouldn’t have minded if they were all red this morning. He couldn’t help the feeling that they were hastening him towards something terrible.

Plato escaped the ring of
maquiladoras
arranged in parks on the outskirts and accelerated away. He knew Samalayuca. It was hardly a village, just a collection of abandoned huts. The road, the 45, cut right through the desert. The
barrial
was a prime cartel dumping spot. He had lost count of the number of early morning calls that had summoned him to Samalayuca, Ranchería or Villa Ahumada.